TUESDAY

“Can I see it?” Aaron glanced at his friend’s bandaged hand.

“It’s kinda gross, but yeah, I guess.”

Tim lifted the white gauze, exposing a gash across his palm, starting under his middle finger and running toward his wrist. There were a few dark stitches poking out of the day-old wound. It still looked wet in the midmorning sun.

“Gross, dude.”

“I told you!”

The two boys ducked and weaved through tangles of branches as they made their way deeper into the woods. The trees cast long shadows across the makeshift path Aaron knew well. Despite all the years—how many had it been?—instinct carried him through the overgrowth. 

“I can’t even remember the last time we were out at the Fort. Why’d you come out here yesterday?” Aaron asked.

“I dunno,” Tim said. “Maybe with school starting back up soon, I just missed it. Missed hanging out here with you.”

“Feelings? Again—gross, dude.”

Tim gently shoved Aaron and then winced.

“Still hurts, huh?” Aaron said.

“Yeah. My mom sewed it up best she could. Stupid cabin door. And she was pissed I ruined my shirt to wrap it. There was so much blood.”

“Your mom needs to chill. It was just a T-shirt.”

“She’s always yelling at me about how much stuff costs. Like I don’t know we’re broke? Helloooo?” He gestured to his cut-off jean shorts and faded Star Trek T-shirt.

“Too bad it’ll heal before the start of freshman year. You would’ve looked like a badass at your new school. Chicks dig scars.”

“That’s stupid,” Tim said. “High school girls don’t dig dweebs, with or without mangled hands. They dig football players or whatever.”

Aaron turned and presented his outfit, one of many he’d picked out for the new school year when his mom took him to the GAP last week.

 “Speak for yourself. I’ll have the ladies swooning.”

Tim froze in his tracks.

“That stunned, huh?” Aaron laughed before he turned and saw it too.

The cabin stood in a small clearing a few feet ahead of them. The Fort, with a capital F. Shouldering decades of dust and neglect, the dilapidated wooden structure was near falling apart.

The rotted roof dipped in three different places but hadn’t broken completely through. The windows weren’t as lucky. Strong winds had blown branches through a few of them, and the boys took care of the rest with rocks and BB guns over the years.

But the door. The door had always been a splintered wooden pallet barely clinging to the face of the cabin. Today, the old wooden door was gone, and a polished white panel stood in its place.

“Did you do that?” Aaron asked.

“No.”

“Was it here yesterday?”

“No, I told you, that piece-of-shit door was what shredded my hand.”

Tim started moving again; always acting before thinking. Aaron surveyed the clearing and, not seeing anyone else around, followed Tim down the last of the grassy hill leading to the Fort.

The cabin was half a mile deep in the woods behind Aaron’s house and had been long-abandoned when they’d stumbled upon it. Tim once admitted he was a little jealous. His mom’s apartment only backed up to Glendale’s Groceries and their parking lot. Aaron’s house, all three levels of it, backed up to miles of forest.

They stepped onto the creaky old porch. There was no trace left of the dry-rotted door Tim tore his hand open on the day before. The chrome handle shimmered in the warming sun, not a speck of dust on it or any other part of the new door.

Tim reached for the handle.

“Wait,” Aaron said. “We don’t know who did this. What if they’re inside? What if the owner, like, came back?”

“We’ve been coming out here since third grade. No one else has ever been here.”

“Well, someone put this new door up.”

“Right, okay, and don’t you want to find out who?”

“Not if they’re gonna get us in trouble. Or pull a gun on us or something.”

“No one’s going to do that, dude. Come on.” Tim’s eyes were wide and pleading. The same look that got Aaron grounded for a month when Tim convinced him to take the Thunderbird out for a spin around the block. The look that convinced him not to ask Laurel to the dance last fall because Tim wanted to go with her. The look Aaron knew led to trouble, but, as usual, he relented.

Without another thought, Tim tried the handle, found it unlocked, and opened the new door.

They took a step inside. The air was stale, tinged with the ever-present faint smell of decay. It burned Aaron’s nose, but in a way he liked. In a way he had missed. No one else was there.

Tim turned back to the door, running his hands over the hardware. It’d been hung perfectly, attached to the crumbling structure with polished chrome hinges.

Aaron crept into the main living area. It was lit only by the sun cutting through the busted-out windows. There was a small kitchen in the back, home to a wood-burning stove and a few cabinets. Most of the cabinet doors hung askew and paint had peeled off the worn faces in large flakes. Everything felt colder and smaller than he remembered it. The Fort was supposed to be their castle—their kingdom—but now Aaron saw it for what it really was: kind of sad.

If someone else wanted this piece of shit, wanted to fix it up, Aaron thought maybe he was ready to let them have it. There wasn’t anything here worth holding on to, and certainly nothing worth getting in troub—wait, the Stash.

“You think the Stash is still here?” Saying it out loud made Aaron cringe. The Stash, with a capital S. They were so bad at naming things back in third grade.

Tim didn’t respond, still running his hands over the smooth white surface as he studied the door.

Aaron walked to the corner where the living room met the kitchen wall. There, next to a splintered and faded couch, a hole in the floor held the Stash: five water-damaged issues of Playboy, two packs of matches, an assortment of fireworks, and a few silver dollars in a small tin. The life savings of their youth, items accumulated over the years from friends-of-friends’ dads’ garages and basements.

Aaron knelt to pick through the Stash, but as he reached down under the floorboards, a bolt of pain shot up from his knee through his thigh.

“Ah, shit!” He jumped back to his feet.

“What happened?” Tim rushed over, floorboards creaking under his weight.

Aaron looked down at his knee. He was bleeding onto the hem of his Hilfiger shorts, and red lines ran down his pale shin. There were drops of his blood on the floorboards and a small congregation of broken glass.

So much red seeped out of the three cuts in his knee, he couldn’t even tell how deep they were.

“Dude,” Tim said, “that is so much worse than my hand. It’s not a competition. No need to mangle yourself, too.”

“Shut up. It’s so dirty in here, it’s gonna get infected or something.”

Tim sat on the edge of the old couch to examine Aaron’s knee.

“I think we’re gonna have to amputate.”

“Shut up, dummy,” Aaron repeated and sniffed, hot tears on his cheeks now. He turned and wiped his face. He was going into high school next month and high schoolers weren’t supposed to cry when they got hurt; that was baby stuff. All the nice clothes in the world wouldn’t do him any good if the girls at his new school saw him crying.

“It’s okay,” Tim assured him, holding up his bandaged hand. “I cried too, yesterday.”

Tim unwrapped his hand and started winding his bandage around Aaron’s knee.

“Dude, your hand. Don’t you need—”

“It’s fine. Mom only wrapped it again to keep it clean. I won’t play in any dirt until I get home, Scout’s honor.” Tim held up the traditional three-finger salute, then dropped all but his middle finger, flipping off Aaron. “And eventually your knee will be fine too, but the walk back to your house is going to suck ass.”

Tim held out his hand and Aaron accepted the help off the floor.

“So, is the Stash still there?” Tim asked.

“Yeah. Playboys and all.”

“Good! Then whoever put up that door must not have come in. Or they did, but didn’t appreciate your taste in, uh, reading materials. We can come back tomorrow and, as a reward for your bravery today, you can look at all the fake tits you want.”

Aaron managed a laugh, but his stomach soured at the thought of coming back. The idea of returning didn’t feel like a reward.

WEDNESDAY

“Get in here!” Tim waved Aaron inside the Fort. “Hurry up!”

“What is it?!” Aaron picked up speed, limping as best he could with his bandaged knee. Tim’s used gauze had held up for most of the walk home yesterday, but Aaron’s dad had since cleaned and dressed his knee properly. Dad never really approved of the Fort when they had a perfectly good rec room in the basement, but he hadn’t forbidden it, either.

Aaron made it onto the porch and stopped, leaning against the door frame. He didn’t have to go inside. He could see past Tim, and it was obvious whoever had put up the new door had returned.

“The floor!”

“Yeah.”

Once a jigsaw puzzle of loose boards and knots of wood, the cabin’s floor was now a gleaming checkerboard of marble tiles, each one perfectly aligned.

“What the hell,” Aaron said.

“Yeah, and that’s not all. The Stash?” Tim walked across the marble to their hiding spot next to the ragged couch. “Look.”

An air vent. The hole in the wooden boards had been replaced by a metal air vent in the marble floor. Aaron half expected AC or heated air to burst up from the vent, even though the cabin had neither. The old Fort didn’t even have electricity.

Tim slipped his pocketknife out of his jeans, flipped it open, and used the blade to turn and remove the screws on the vent. The metal cover popped off, and in the vent sat their Stash, all of it accounted for.

“Alright,” Aaron said. “I’m getting out of here.”

“What?”

“What do you mean ‘what’? There is something seriously weird going on here.”

“Yeah, but. . .” Tim stood and walked back over to Aaron. “It’s also kinda cool, right? The Fort is getting all these great upgrades, better than the crap back at my apartment even. And whoever’s doing it clearly doesn’t mind we’re here. They saved and re-hid the Stash!”

Aaron couldn’t argue with the logic, but that only made him more uneasy. Who would save that trash? The silver dollars, okay, those were worth a few bucks each now. But the other stuff? And why wasn’t Tim more concerned?

“It doesn’t make sense. Why would someone do that? It’s just so. . . weird. I don’t know why you came back out here after all this time, but I’m done with it.”

“I came back. . . I came back because this is it. This is the end,” Tim said.

“The end of what?”

“Of us! Of everything! I’m going to Cellar High next year. You’re going to Northeast Prep.”

“That’s not going to change anything. We barely saw each other at school last year, but look, we’re still friends.”

“Yeah, but we only had the one class together, and we stopped coming out here.”

“Which was probably a good thing,” Aaron said, gesturing around the cabin. “In case you haven’t noticed, someone is fixing this place up now.”

“Next year we’ll never see each other. You won’t have time for me. You’ll make new friends. You’ll have other stuff going on. You’re always going away on the weekends and—”

“So come with us.”

“With what money?” Tim said. “Mom can’t afford to send me on vacations. And Dad stopped sending cash years ago.”

“We would cover it. It hasn’t been a problem before.”

“I don’t want to go with you. I want us to stay here.”

“It was fun playing out here when we were kids but it’s time to grow up, dude. It’s just a stupid old fort.”

Tim’s face stiffened. “That sounded like a lowercase f.”

“Maybe it was, dude.” Aaron immediately regretted letting the words slip out.

Tim said nothing.

“Look, we can’t keep coming out here. Someone is doing all this. This is big,” Aaron said. He felt scared. Scared for himself, scared for Tim, and scared to admit it. “And whoever it is, they’re gonna catch us in here. That’s, like, trespassing.”

“That’s, like, trespassing,” Tim mocked in a singsong voice. “Big new man in his big new clothes. Your mom should have taken you diaper shopping, you fucking baby.”

Aaron swung and hit Tim in the mouth. Tim stumbled back onto the couch, sending a cloud of dust and dirt into the air.

“Oh, shit,” Aaron said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.” But he knew. He’d been scared, and his friend—his best friend—mocked him for it.

Tim put his fingers to his mouth and then pulled them back. Strings of spit and blood ran from his mouth to his finger tips.

“Just go then,” Tim said.

“No, man, look, I’m really sorry, okay? It’s just—”

“I thought you loved this place as much as I do, but. . . just go.” Aaron watched Tim massage his jaw, then wipe his hand on the torn and stained couch. He didn’t know how to make this better. He didn’t know what else he could say.

Feeling defeated, Aaron turned and left, not looking back until he reached home.

THURSDAY

“Okay, deal,” Aaron agreed. He didn’t like it, but it felt right.

Tim stood on the back porch of Aaron’s house. He had proposed one last trip out to the cabin. They could split the Stash and close the door forever on the Fort. Aaron couldn’t let the last six years—almost half of their lives—end the way things did yesterday. The Fort had been their sanctuary, their home away from home, for years. Even if he wanted to be done with it now, it deserved a proper farewell.

The boys walked the trail through the woods behind Aaron’s house, for what would probably be the final time, in silence.

Aaron wondered if this was what it felt like to lose a friend. Not just a friend, his best friend. He’d never stood up to Tim before—he couldn’t. Everyone else in Tim’s life always said no. So Aaron always said yes. To all the joyrides; to stepping aside so his friend could get the girl, the last slice of pizza in the cafeteria, the final quarter at the arcade; to opening all the doors Aaron knew they shouldn’t open.

Fifteen minutes later, they stood in front of the decrepit cabin’s pristine white door. Aaron found he wasn’t worried about any of that other stuff now. Of course he wasn’t losing Tim, it’d just been a fight. Not even their longest. They once went two whole weeks without speaking to each other. This fight was nothing.

He did, however, suddenly worry about what they’d find changed inside. That was probably not nothing.

Tim opened the clean white panel door.

Sitting on the marble tile floor in the living area, their mildewed, dilapidated couch had been replaced with a plush new leather sofa.

“The couch,” Aaron said.

“Yup!” Tim grinned.

“But none of the other furniture?” Aaron looked around at the side tables, the recliner missing half of its stuffing, and two wooden chairs under the window—all the dusty antiques they’d had over the years. The couch alone stood clean and new.

“Yup.” Tim said again.

“You don’t seem surprised.”

“That’s because I saw it already. I couldn’t sleep. I rode my bike over, left it behind your garage, and snuck out here at, like, four this morning, and there it was. Then. . .” Tim’s smile grew.

Aaron was afraid to ask. “Yeah?”

“Then I figured it out!”

“You know who’s doing this? Who’s messing with us?”

“Yeah. We are!” Tim said proudly.

“Huh?”

“The first day I came back out here, I got that huge dagger of a splinter in my hand. I didn’t notice, but I must have bled on the door, right? There was so much blood! The next day, we came out here and found a brand-new door.”

“Okay?”

“Then you knelt on the glass. We both saw the blood on the floor. Next day, brand-new floor.”

“Okay,” Aaron said.

“Yesterday, you sucker-punched me—”

“I said I was—”

“You sucker-punched me. I landed on the couch, I must have got blood on it, and now there’s a new couch.”

“But none of the other furniture’s new because your blood didn’t get on anything else in the Fort?” Aaron said, trying to follow Tim’s logic.

“Right.”

“So whoever owns the Fort is cleaning up after us?”

“No, not whoever. The Fort itself. It’s, like, feeding off us. It’s growing, improving, whatever.”

“I don’t think—” Aaron started, but stopped when Tim pulled the pocketknife from his jeans.

“I think,” Tim said, “we can prove it pretty easily.” He held up his knife. “We’ll wipe some blood on something super specific, and tomorrow. . . tomorrow, I bet only that one thing will be replaced. Or upgraded. Nothing else.”

“Shit, dude, are you gonna cut yourself?”

“Technically, it’s your turn.”

“What? Screw that!” Aaron saw the terror on his own face reflected in the blade and backed away from his friend.

“I made the door, you did the floor, and then I got the couch. . . so now it’s your turn again,” Tim said and held out the pocketknife.

“No. Dude, you’re scaring me with whatever this crazy blood-pact thing is. Keep my half of the Stash. I don’t even care anymore. This is seriously messed up. You’re acting like a psycho.”

Aaron turned for the door. His body tightened with the realization he was turning his back on Tim, who was still holding a knife. But Tim didn’t move.

It had been a mistake coming back out here. Aaron walked across the polished marble floor to the white door and stepped back out onto the sun-bleached porch.

“Fine then!” Tim yelled from inside the Fort. Aaron flinched at the sudden outburst. “Don’t think you can just come back when this place is a five-star bachelor pad. All the cool kids will be here. All the hot high school girls you care so much about. But. Not. You!”

Tim’s words silenced not only the birds and insects and other sounds of the woods, they also silenced Aaron. He recalled the sharp reflection of his face in the blade of Tim’s pocketknife. Tim, his friend who had lied to get him back out here. Tim, who wanted to slice open his best friend for some new curtains or nicer shoes. Fuck that.

Aaron hurried back up the path toward home, toward safety.

SUNDAY

“Hey, man,” Aaron started the voicemail. “I know you’re probably still mad at me, but I didn’t see you in church this morning with your mom, and I haven’t heard from you at all the last few days. Just wanted to check in. Call me back or something.”

Aaron hung up the kitchen phone. Tim disappearing for days was nothing new. One time, he said he was going to live with his dad and missed an entire week of school before showing up again the following Monday. Tim never talked about where he went that week. Or the time he stood up to that asshole Zach, and half the football team beat on him before Coach Morez broke it up. Aaron waited outside Tim’s apartment every day after school, but four days passed before Tim showed his face again.

This felt different. Aaron had a pretty good idea of where Tim was.

He looked out through the back patio door. Beyond the tree line, half a mile into the forest, sat the Fort.

Aaron kicked off his fancy church shoes and laced up his sneakers.

After making the trek through the woods, his knee, which had started to feel better over the last few days, was bleeding again.

He heard something. Something beyond the rustling branches and the birds busying themselves on those branches. It was music. Muffled and distorted, but it was music.

Aaron carefully climbed the last hill standing between him and his destination. The Fort glowed, even in the midday sun. Every window flared with light from inside. Through the gleaming walls, a beat echoed out into the trees.

Aaron limped, his knee getting worse with each step closer to the Fort. Not that he could even identify the structure anymore. The wooden exterior was perfectly sided and painted. The roof peaked tall and proud with new shingles. The broken-out windows shimmered with full panes of glass.

The music, so loud, rumbled from inside, though they’d never once had power in the cabin. Aaron remembered Tim arguing with his mom after they drained a brand-new pack of C batteries in a single afternoon with his boombox two summers ago. Tim was grounded the whole weekend.

Aaron snuck up to one of the windows and peered inside.

The entire structure was replaced, reborn. Aaron took in the sight of glossy stone countertops, perfect little square cabinets, and high-end appliances, even better than his parents had at home. The posters he and Tim hung up years ago—targets for BB gun practice, like New Kids on the Block and Alf—were replaced with paintings he recognized but couldn’t name. He’d seen them in their art teacher’s classroom wall calendar. The swirling blue clouds had marked April, and the one with melting clocks was May.

He saw someone dance in from the kitchen. The dancing boy was almost unrecognizable, but it was Tim, covered in red. Tim, covered in ragged gashes. His clothes were drenched in wet and tacky blood. Tim, skinned alive.

Tim danced over to the loudspeakers and turned up the volume on the stereo, leaving bright red fingerprints on the receiver’s slick aluminum dial. He rocketed his fist into the air, exalted, then continued to dance and flail. Aaron slowly crept back from the window, eyes wide in terror.

Tim was having the time of his life, dripping blood everywhere. And the Fort lapped up every drop of it.